Some 300 Catholic and Jewish Theological Scholars, Clerics Mark 20th Anniversary of Nostra Aetate

On October 28, 1965, Vatican Council II promulgated the famous declaration, “Nostra Aetate” (In Our Time) a milestone in relations between the Roman Catholic Church and Judaism. For the first time in 2,000 years, the Church formally repudiated the idea of collective guilt of the Jewish people for the crucifixion of Jesus.

Last week, some 300 theological scholars, Catholics and Jews, clergy and laymen, gathered at the St. Thomas Acquinas Pontifical University — The Angelicum –here to mark the 20th anniversary of the event, to ponder its effects on Catholic-Jewish relations over the past two decades and its implications for the future. The gathering was officially titled “Nostra Aetate: Twenty Years in Retrospect.”

It culminated last Friday in a Papal audience with the participants, followed by the first press conference ever organized by the Association of International Vatican Journalists on the theme of Jewish-Catholic dialogue. Scholars of both faiths were invited to answer questions.

ADDED SIGNIFICANCE OF THE COLLOQUIUM

The colloquium had added significance. It occurred as the 40th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany and the liberation of the death camps approached. The Pope had moving words about the Holocaust.

The Nostra Aetate said the Church “decries” anti-Semitism. A later official Vatican document substituted the stronger word, “condemns.” It referred to “the spiritual patrimony common to Christians and Jews” and directed the Catholic world “to foster and recommend that mutual understanding and respect which is the fruit, above all, of Biblical and theological studies, as well as of fraternal dialogues.”

The retrospective, in effect a survey of what all of this has meant, was organized and sponsored by the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, and three Catholic interreligious organizations — the Pontifical University, Centro Pro Unione, and Sisters of Zion (SIDIC) in cooperation with the Holy See’s Commission for Religious Relations with Judaism, represented by Johannes Cardinal Willebrands, president of the Commission and Msgr. Jorge Mejia, its secretary.

At the Papal audience, Rabbi Ronald Sobel, senior rabbi of Temple Emanu-El in New York and chairman of the ADL’s intergroup relations committee, observed that “The past two decades of relations between the Jewish people and the Church are nothing less than a modern miracle … reversing 2,000 years of previous relationship … Truly, this is God’s doing.”

TOTALITARIANISM OF LEFT AND RIGHT DENOUNCED

Addressing the opening session of the colloquium, Nathan Perlmutter, national director of the ADL, denounced totalitarianism and political extremism of the right or left. He said it was “contemptuous of our personhood … which is by way of saying, totalitarianism in its actions hates God.”

It provided the underpinnings for the Holocaust, he said, adding, in a quotation from historian Hannah Arendt, “The Nazis counted on the indifference of the West, on its willingness to see the Jews finally erased from the memory of man …”

Pope John Paul II, who addressed the gathering last Friday, also made the point that absence of faith in God brought on the Holocaust. Jews and Christians must get to know each other better “as members of religions closely linked to one another,” he said.

He observed that the colloquium was “a sign of maturity in our relations” and the need of both Christians and Jews to believe in God in the present secular context.

STATEMENT BY THE POPE

Referring to the joint commemoration of Yom Hashoah, the Day of Remembrance of the Holocaust, which took place on the second day of the colloquium, the Pope said: “I note the reference in our program to the catastrophe which so cruelly decimated the Jewish people, before and during the war, especially in the death camps. Let us pray together that it will never happen again, and that whatever we do to get to know each other better, to collaborate with one another and to bear witness to the one God and to his will, as expressed in the Decalogue, will help make people still more aware of the abyss which mankind can fall into when we do not acknowledge other people as brothers and sisters, sons and daughters of the same heavenly father.”

Recalling that the colloquium had set aside a time for remembrance of the Holocaust, the Pope added, “And how could we forget that out of the ashes of Auschwitz rose the miracle of Israel.”

PURPOSES OF THE GATHERING

An earlier speaker, Joseph Lichten, the ADL’s representative in Rome for the past 15 years, who explained the purposes of the colloquium before it convened, noted:

“At this moment, the greatest desire of the Jewish communities of the world would be to see diplomatic relations established between the Vatican and Israel, thus formalizing the existing relationship and bearing witness to the true understanding, on the part of the Holy See, of the emotional and religious significance of this land for the Jewish people.”

But apart from the Pope’s reference to Israel rising from the ashes of Auschwitz, there was no hint of any diplomatic link to the Jewish State.

Sobel, nevertheless, said that American Jews feel that the path undertaken by the Pope toward Israel is constructive. He mentioned as a positive example, the recent meeting between John Paul II and Israel’s Premier, Shimon Peres.

Sobel, along with Cardinal Willebrands and Msgr. Mejia deplored the fact that in some places, in some countries in Latin America, “we continue to hear echoes of the teachings of contempt, while in Oberammergau we are witness to themes that have been repudiated by the Church.”

They were referring to the Passion Play produced regularly in the Bavarian village of Oberammergau, the theme of which is Jewish culpability for the crucifixion.

The Pope did not escape criticism at the gathering. Tulia Zevi, president of the Union of Italian Jewish Communities, took him sharply to task for the audience he granted to extreme rightwing members of the Parliament of Europe on April 10. They included Jean-Marie Le Pen, leader of the National Front in France, whom Zevi called “that notorious French xenophobe and anti-Semite.”